All posts from Mark Graban’s LeanBlog.org, including podcasts, announcements, articles, and more.
Joining me for Episode #241 is a returning guest and friend of mine, Dan Markovitz (@DanMarkovitz on Twitter). He was a guest on Episodes #135 (talking about A Factory of One) and #52 (talking more generally about office Lean). He has also…
Another question I get thrown at me very often is something along the lines of “How do we get more buy in for ______” with that space being filled with Lean, Kaizen, 5S, using the EMR system, improvement, or any number of terms. If you do a Google search for Lean “lack of buy in”...
In addition to my blogging here, I write occasionally for our blog over at KaiNexus.com, where we have multiple contributors. I also do monthly webinars and the next one is on February 16, where Dr. Greg Jacobson and will talk about gaining…
I wrote a new piece for LinkedIn that I hope would be of interest to you even if you’re in healthcare. Why? It’s a story about what an organization does when you don’t have enough (or any) direct work for your front-line staff to do. Toyota would continue paying employees and would put them to...
If you follow the auto industry, you might have seen headlines this week about how Toyota is being forced to shut down production in its Japanese factories next week (see one article, via Bloomberg). If you’re a devotee of the Toyota Production…
My blog turned 11 years old last month. Thanks to everyone for reading! I looked back, as a Throwback Thursday, and found a number of really good posts that were published on this date...
I get asked a lot, “How do you know if a hospital is truly ‘Lean?'” Nobody is ever perfect or “fully Lean,” but you could ask, “How do you know if somebody is on a legitimate Lean transformation journey?” If you could only ask one question...
Last year, Joe Swartz and I hosted a workshop at his organization, Franciscan St. Francis Health in Indianapolis. We called it “Kaizen Live!” and it was designed as an opportunity to see a culture of continuous improvement – what does it look like? What do people say?We lay this out in our Healthcare Kaizen books...
Alternate title: “Lean is an Integrated System. Of Course Just Implementing Pieces Leads to Failure.” Throughout the 10 years that I’ve been involved with Lean healthcare efforts, I’ve heard multiple stories of organizations that ended their formal Lean initiatives. They do so, as I’ve been told, because they need to cut costs...
Mark’s Note: Today’s post is an excerpt, used with permission, from a new book by Steven Leuschel titled “Lean Culture Change,” with an introduction by Rodger Lewis, a former Toyota executive at the Georgetown, Kentucky plant. I’ve also recently recorded a…
Burris has a new article on the Harvard Business Review website: “Employee Suggestion Schemes Don’t Have to Be Exercises in Futility” In my own work and travels, it’s hard to find anybody who has good things to say about suggestion boxes...
My guest for episode #240 is somebody I’ve wanted to interview for a long time, Leah Binder, the president and CEO of Leapfrog Group, “a voluntary program aimed at mobilizing employer purchasing power to alert America’s health industry that big…
